This invention relates to a flexible printed circuit board and a coverlay film. More particularly, it relates to a flexible printed circuit board and a coverlay film using polyimide film as insulator thereof and to manufacturing methods therefor.
In the prior art, a flexible printed circuit board is manufactured by using as an insulator, for example, a polyimide film, and attaching the same to a metal foil with an adhesive. The adhesives used for this purpose may be epoxy/nylon base adhesives or adhesives of epoxy resin/acrylonitrile butadiene rubber containing carboxyl group.
The flexible printed circuit boards have recently been widely used for appliances in telecommunications, and consumer and industrial appliances. As the packaging of those appliances becomes simpler, more compact, more reliable, and more highly functional, restrictions imposed on flexible printed circuit boards become extremely stringent. The boards are required to have high thermal resistance, good weatherability, electric insulation properties, bonding strength, and flexibility, and to meet severe conditions entirely different from those for glass epoxy board, ANSI grade, G-10 or FR-4.
More specifically, they are required to have thermal resistance and electric insulation properties as well as flexibility, and these are completely contradicting conditions. If emphasis is placed on flexibility, thermal resistance and electric insulation properties ordinarily must be sacrificed to some extent.
The aforementioned epoxy/nylon adhesives provide high bonding strength but the boards are inferior in electric insulation properties at a high humidity. The boards using adhesives of epoxy resin/acrylonitrile butadiene rubber containing carboxyl group are superior in bonding strength but inferior in thermal resistance. They are known to drastically deteriorate in bonding strength and flexibility when heated.
The above description of the prior art is applicable to a coverlay film which is used to protect circuits during processing of flexible printed circuit boards. In essence, the prior art flexible printed circuit boards and coverlay films known in the art cannot quite meet various conditions currently required of them.